Sony Announces 5.3 Million PS4s Sold Worldwide

Paul Tassi
, ContributorNews and opinion about video games, technology and the internetOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

You don't often see companies practically giddy with glee in their press releases, but
Sony certainly has something to smile about after announcing that 5.3 million PS4s have been sold worldwide since launch.

This is far past Sony's expectations for the console, as they predicted the PS4 would reach 5 million units sold by the end of March. These new figures mean the console has moved another million units since the new year alone. And yes, for the wary, these figures are units sold, not shipped.

The most impressive part of this is that the original five million prediction was taking into account the system's launch in Japan on February 22nd, which hasn't even come to pass yet. Once the PS4 goes on sale there, expect even more sky high sales numbers out of Sony.

All of this inevitably leads to comparisons between Sony,
Nintendo and
Microsoft. Sony has been bursting with these sorts of figures, and can't get out their good news fast enough. The other two companies have been a bit more reserved.

Nintendo revealed 5.86 million in total Wii U's shipped (not sold) over its lifetime, with predictions that number will hit 6.2 million in March. With shipping totals like that, it stands to reason that if sold-through units are considered, Sony's PS4 may have already caught up with Nintendo's Wii U even after a year's head start.

And while Microsoft broke many of its own records with the launch of the Xbox One, it's becoming clear that Sony is firmly in the driver's seat at the moment in their head-to-head next gen war. Microsoft announced that 3.9 million Xbox Ones had been shipped by the end of 2013, with more than 3 million sold. The system has been released in fewer regions, but also carries a $100 higher price tag at $500 which could explain most of the disparity.

Of course, the price gap is due to the Kinect, and I agree with Polygon's Ben Kuchera who says it's time for Microsoft to debundle the Xbox One from the peripheral:

This is the ultimate test: If the pack-in were to be sold by itself, would 90 percent of players pick it up? The answer is yes for a controller or power cables. The HDMI cable is needed to connect the system to your television. Would most people buy a $100 Kinect along with the system? Absolutely not. They have one because they don't have a choice, and that's a brutish way to build a product.

The defense to this argument is that it's too early to make a judgment call on the Kinect being bundled with the system, as it's only been a few months. I would argue that though "Kinect 2.0" is an upgrade over its predecessor, Kinect as an entity has been tested for years already, and consumers simply haven't warmed to it. At least not to the point where most would buy one if actually given the choice, as Kuchera says.

The arrival of Titanfall could start to shift the winds back in Microsoft's direction, as by all accounts the game is the first "must have" across either system, and it's an Xbox One/PC exclusive. While Sony has Infamous: Second Son coming out around the same time, I don't think the two are comparable in terms of potential sales or their ability to sell systems by proximity. Titanfall may be able to move Ones by itself, but I'm not sure if Second Son could. Granted, it would be a lot easier for Titanfall to sell Xbox Ones if it was $400 and free from a Kinect which the game doesn't use, but that's already been addressed.

These numbers from Sony are truly impressive, especially so when there are almost no exclusives for the system at this point, with only the promise of worthwhile games to come. It shows how ready consumers were for the next console generation, and that Sony gave them seemingly exactly what they wanted, while Nintendo and Microsoft may have not.